Odyssey 2005

Earlier this year, a memorabilia company called Profiles in History offered for auction the dance floor used in “Saturday Night Fever.” Profiles, which is based in Beverly Hills, has handled plenty of major sales—Al Pacino’s fedora from “The Godfather,” Clint Eastwood’s carbine rifle from “Rawhide,” the original “Star Wars” light sabres. Still, the company was unprepared for the chaos that erupted over this particular lot. “It was absolute pandemonium,” Joseph Maddalena, the company’s president, said. “People were phoning us day and night, and we received bids from all around the world.”

One interested party, a visitor to a message board for fans of the movie, wrote, “Damn, I would love to have that. But then I think, where the heck would I put it?” Another post was beseeching. “DEAR BUYER OF THE FLOOR: if you find a VERY dusty drop-ball earring, please contact me. No questions asked.” Eventually, the lot was awarded to an anonymous bidder for $188,800. But there was one problem: a Brooklyn man named Vito Bruno had filed a lawsuit claiming that he was the dance floor’s rightful owner.

“I’m a disco bunny,” Bruno said the other day, sitting in his office, on the first floor of a brownstone in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Bruno, who is forty-nine, got his start in the industry by working the door at Odyssey 2001, the night club (later renamed Spectrum) featured in the movie. At age twenty, he became its manager. “I had a big, Guido’d hair thing,” he said. He gestured to a framed photograph of himself and Cher. “Like all moths, you’re drawn to the spotlight.”

One Sunday, a few months before the Profiles auction, Bruno was flipping through the Times classifieds. He came across an ad announcing the on-site “absolute auction” of the contents of 802 Sixty-fourth Street, in Brooklyn—Odyssey 2001’s old address. Along with Crown amps, turntables, and bar sinks, the ad described one item Bruno had to have: the “original Saturday Night Fever dance floor.”

The next day, Bruno called Spectrum’s owner, Joseph (Jay) Rizzo, to see if he would consider making a private side deal to sell the floor—a threehundred-and-eighty-square-foot slab of transparent Plexiglas, lit from below by hundreds of flashing, colored bulbs. “He said he wanted half a yard, meaning fifty thousand dollars, to take it off the block,” Bruno said. He declined.

Bruno decided instead to try his luck at the auction in Brooklyn. After dispatching some of the d.j. equipment and unopened liquor inventory, the auctioneer moved on to the dance floor, for which, it turned out, Bruno was the only bidder. “I bid up to six thousand dollars when the auctioneer says, ‘Stop bidding, item withdrawn.’ ” Bruno approached Rizzo to see what the problem was. “ ‘I’m busy’ is what he said,” Bruno remembers. “ ‘Call me another day.’ So I call him another day and he says, ‘I’m not giving it away.’ ” (Rizzo maintains that he withdrew the floor before any bids were placed.)

In Bruno’s lawsuit, which is now being heard in a Kings County court, he argues that the auctioneer’s withdrawal of the dance floor violated the legal rules of an absolute auction, which mandate that an item must be sold to the highest bidder, no matter how low his bid. And, for the moment, a Brooklyn judge has granted a preliminary injunction that prevents Rizzo from packing up the floor—which is being held in a Staten Island storage facility—and sending it to the winner of the Profiles auction.

Bruno, who is now managing recording artists (he has represented, among others, Crystal Waters and 2-5, 50 Cent’s cousin), said that his wish to own the floor is both sentimentally and financially motivated. “It’s part of history, part of me growing up,” he said. “But, as a businessman, I know what to do with something like that. Most people in the entertainment business, disco ain’t cool to them. They gotta understand: the Bee Gees sold thirty-seven million records to somebody.”